PlaceMakers aids Chinese builders’ learning

With the Chinese building community estimated to be involved in the construction of 30% of properties built in Auckland, PlaceMakers has initiated a series of LBP seminars translated into Mandarin

 PlaceMakers Asian Segment Trade Sales Manager Chen (Jeff) Li says that the first round of seminars was hugely successful, with three events hosted at the Albany, Mt Wellington and New Lynn stores earlier this year.

“Our Chinese customers have always been very willing to learn, it’s just that previously many of them haven’t been able to get a lot of value from our seminars because of the language barrier,” says Jeff. “We had close to 100 people in attendance at New Lynn and feedback was really good; everyone seemed a lot more engaged with the content than at previous seminars.

“They asked a whole bunch of questions, which was great!. Previously many of them used to  take photos of the slides for reading at home.”

In addition to the main translator Helen Meng, Jeff and a number of Mandarin-speaking PlaceMakers account managers were on hand to help.

“Helen did a good job relaying the key information. As she doesn’t have specialist knowledge of building products and techniques, we helped to translate some of that information and also address some questions.”

Content covered in the first round related to the Laminex product range, including a new internal lining product, along with technical information about each product.

Coming up

 Because the first round was so successful, Jeff says PlaceMakers is planning on running the sessions on a quarterly basis. The next round of seminars is planned for June, with a number of suppliers having expressed interest in being involved.